The Fear of Words: Censorship and the Public Libraries of Canada [Manuscript]

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Schrader, A.M.

• This book presents the findings of a study of access policies and censorship experiences of the public libraries of Canada. It addresses the issue of the prevailing climate of intellectual freedom in public libraries across the country. It shows just how much community pressure is brought to bear on public libraries to remove or restrict materials, and how their staffs respond to such pressures. It also makes tentative comparisons with recent American events. The Fear of Words is the first attempt to document the public library experience of an entire nation. No other survey research on contemporary censorship in public libraries has been published that is comparable in scope, depth, or geographic coverage to the wealth of information contained in this book. A favorable response rate among public libraries, representing 76 percent of all Canadian residents, assures a high level of confidence in the findings. Fear of Words, which was published by the Canadian Library Association in 1995, was based on this scholarly version of the study that included comprehensive statistical analysis and modeling of the data.

• Date created

  1993

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Censorship
  • Public libraries
  • Canada

• Type of Item

  Report

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3WC60

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International